Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a fallen soldier in Iraq who reinvigorated the anti-war movement, was arrested and removed from the House gallery Tuesday night just before President Bush's State of the Union address, a police spokeswoman said. Sheehan, who had been invited to attend the speech by Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., was charged with demonstrating in the Capitol building, a misdemeanor, said Capitol Police Sgt. Kimberly Schneider. Sheehan was taken in handcuffs to police headquarters a few blocks away and her case was processed as Bush spoke. Schneider said Sheehan had worn a T-shirt with an anti-war slogan to the speech and covered it up until she took her seat. Police warned her that such displays were not allowed, but she did not respond, the spokeswoman said. Police handcuffed Sheehan and removed her from the gallery before Bush arrived. Sheehan was to be released on her own recognizance, Schneider said. ... http://www.usatoday.com

Is your annual salary lower than your age multiplied by $1,000? Do you eat lots of snacks and fast foods? Japanese readers who answered yes to these and other questions by Atsushi Miura in his recent best-seller "Karyu Shakai (Underclass Society)" were told what they may have suspected all along: they are members of an emerging class of the new poor. The book touched off debate about a new social divide in a country that has long seen itself as virtually classless, and now fears of growing disparity are fuelling a political attack against Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Seiji Maehara, leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, says Koizumi's market-based reforms have neglected society's weakest. "We stand for something completely different from Koizumi-style 'survival of the fittest' which is expanding societal gaps and failing to provide safety nets," Maehara recently told Reuters. ...http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1563574

A politically weakened President Bush declared Tuesday night that America must break its long dependence on Mideast oil and rebuked critics of his stay-the-course strategy for the unpopular war in Iraq. “America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world,” Bush said as he sought to drive the election-year agenda in his annual State of the Union address. “By applying the talent and technology of America, this country can dramatically improve our environment, move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.” Rejecting calls for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, Bush said, “There is no peace in retreat.” He also slapped at those who complain he took the country to war on the erroneous grounds that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. “Hindsight alone is not wisdom,” Bush said. “And second-guessing is not a strategy.” ...http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11110276/from/RSS/

The Bush administration is considering asking Congress later this year for at least $2 billion in new reconstruction money, primarily for maintaining completed Iraqi facilities. Administration officials say the additional funding is needed to prevent completed projects in Iraq from falling into disrepair while the new government tries to establish a steady flow of revenue from oil and other sources to sustain the nation's infrastructure. The money would come in an Iraqi emergency, or supplemental, appropriations bill that also would finance military operations, which cost about $6 billion a month. Congress attached an extra $50 billion to this year's Pentagon spending bill for that purpose, but officials say additional money likely will be needed. An administration official declined to comment. Congress already has approved $24 billion for Iraq reconstruction, and some speculated that the White House would not ask for more. ...http://www.washtimes.com/national/20060130-113747-9568r.htm

A new poll found that nearly half of Iraqis approve of attacks on U.S.-led forces, and most favor setting a timetable for American troops to leave. The poll also found that 80 percent of Iraqis think the United States plans to maintain permanent bases in the country even if the newly elected Iraqi government asks American forces to leave. Researchers found a link between support for attacks and the belief among Iraqis that the United States intends to keep a permanent military presence in the country. At the same time, the poll found that many Iraqis think that some outside military forces are required to keep Iraq stable until the new government can field adequate security forces on its own. Only 39 percent of Iraqis surveyed thought that Iraqi police and army forces were strong enough to deal with the security challenges on their own, ...http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/13750080.htm

Guys, watch out the next time anger threatens to overtake common sense. You could wind up in the hospital. That's the conclusion of a University of Missouri-Columbia researcher who found that anger increased the risk of injury, especially for men, after interviewing more than 2,400 emergency-room patients at three Missouri hospitals. The study, published Tuesday in the Annals of Family Medicine journal, found that people who described themselves as feeling "hostile" before getting hurt faced twice the risk of injury. And compared to women, men were more likely to injure themselves when angry. "When we men start to get angry, maybe we need to take a step back," said Dan Vinson, a professor of family and community medicine and the study's primary author....http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1562670